The present invention relates to a data processing method and a computer based data processing system for use in providing a procedure for generating a product. The method and system are useful tools in the development and/or optimisation of procedures in particular, although not necessarily exclusively, design, development and manufacturing procedures for bringing a product to a market.
For a business enterprise to compete successfully it needs not only to provide the product the marketplace demands, but also to optimise the procedures by which that product is brought to the market. These procedures, for example design, development and manufacturing procedures, can be represented as a series of activities carried out on or in relation to the product and/or its constituent components and the sequence in which those activities are arranged, where the output from one activity provides an input to one or more subsequent activities.
The process of optimising these procedures generally involves improving the sequence of the activities making up the procedure and/or modifying, replacing, adding or deleting activities of the procedure. Typically, the possible alterations to a procedure are numerous. Some alterations will improve the procedure while others will be detrimental to the procedure. There may also be conflicting requirements placed on the procedure, for example, one requirement may be minimising costs, while another may be improving quality, in which case alternatives to the existing procedure may be advantageous in relation to one requirement whilst being detrimental in relation to another requirement.
A number of different types of tool are known for use in the development or re-engineering of procedures. There are tools that provide a uniform way of mapping the activities making up the procedure and their sequence. Others provide a methodological framework to direct the thinking of the user. It is also known to provide a computer based handbook as is described in WO94/19742, where the handbook contains a library of procedures which can be used to present the user with a possible operating sequence, or more usually a series of alternative operating sequences from which one can be chosen and modified if desired.
The known mapping tools enable a structured description of procedures and are useful for capturing information about existing procedures and for describing new or re-engineered procedures once they have been developed, but they provide no assistance in the development process itself. They also tend to encourage the user to take an existing description of the current procedure as the starting point for the development work, and so mitigate against any consideration of radical changes. The methodological tools that aim to stimulate the user to consider alternative approaches on the other hand have the weakness that they do not provide detailed information of the procedures available in any easily retrievable way and so tend to be relatively inefficient and costly in terms of time. The computer-based handbooks referred to are able to capture, and classify in a easily accessible manner, detailed descriptions of existing procedures, but they offer little assistance in envisaging radically different procedures.
The present invention is aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings of the known tools referred to above in providing a data processing method and a computer based data processing system for use in providing a procedure for generating a product.
In one aspect, the present invention provides a method of optimising an industrial procedure for a product, using a database comprising:
(a) generic product descriptions of product physical and/or functional elements and associated properties,
(b) generic descriptions of processing elements and capabilities in relation to the procedure, and a series of rules relating to (a) and (b); specific product information being provided in terms of said generic product descriptions, including product constraints in terms of said associated properties, and the rules being operated to derive for the specific product information, from the data of (a) and (b)
(i) a selection of valid combinations of (a) and (b) as industrial activities, and
(ii) an arrangement of the activities of (i) in order.
It is also possible to employ the series of rules so as to obtain additionally:
(iii) a derivation from (a) and (b) of a measure of effort to perform each activity, and
(iv) integration of the results of (iii) for individual activities to derive a measure of the total effort required.
The constraints included in the specific product information can typically include requirements such as desired levels of efficiency of performance, specific dimensional tolerances of a physical product, acceptable levels of risk and/or a maximum duration for the procedure to be carried out for the product. These can be expected to affect the choice of procedure and its manner of performance in many instances. The operation of the rules therefore preferably also derives a prediction of the ability of the procedure to meet the constraints set.
Using generic product and process descriptions as a basis for developing procedures for a specific product helps avoid the inherent constraints of the known mapping tools and computer handbooks, which necessarily take specific product and procedure descriptions as their starting points. It thus facilitates radical departures from existing specific procedures for a specific product. For example, it might be that the specific procedures from which the generic descriptions of processing elements have been derived relate to products quite different in many respects from the specific product for which the new procedure is being developed, although prejudices in the art would inhibit any linking of those specific procedures with that product.
Advantageously the method of the invention is able to provide a detailed procedure description from which can be derived other results, for use with process visualisation tools and workflow planning tools for example.
The generic descriptions of processing elements may be derived from existing procedures for specific products. For example, specific activities of the same general class (e.g. analysis activities, definition activities etc.) can be analysed for a number of different procedures applied to a number of different products to extract from them a generic description of that class of activity as a processing element.
The database will typically include generic descriptions of processing elements for a plurality of different classes of activity (analysis, definition etc). For the or each class, there may be a number of different processing elements described at differing levels of abstraction. That is, some elements may be generally applicable to many different classes of procedure (design, manufacture, etc) and/or classes of product (mechanical, electronic, etc), while others may be of more limited application.
The rules used to derive the arrangement of the industrial activities, that is the valid combinations of generic product and processing element descriptions, may also be derived from existing, preferably best practice, procedures for specific products. In one form, these rules can be expressed as one or more process equations, the or each equation defining a sequence of generic processing elements as a generic process.
In another instance, in particular design and development procedures, but also some manufacturing procedures, the sequence of activities making up the procedure will include iterative activities where iterations of an activity or group of activities may be necessary to arrive at a valid output. For example, in a design procedure one might define a component part of a product and analyse the performance of that component in relation to constraints (eg. life, weight, cost etc.) associated with the product, repeating these activities a number of times before a component design is arrived at which best fits all the constraints. Preferably, the operation of the rules is then able to give a statistical prediction of the iterative effort.
In another aspect the present invention provides a data processing method for obtaining a procedure for generating a IS product, the method using a computer based data processing system comprising:
digital processing means, and
digital storage means,
the digital storage means having a database stored therein comprising:
(a) data defining generic product descriptions in terms of physical and/or functional elements and associated properties,
(b) data defining a plurality of generic process descriptions in terms of process activities, activity sequence, and associated process capabilities, at least one of said generic process descriptions including an iterative set of process activities, and
(c) data defining rules relating to (a) and (b), the method comprising:
providing the system specific product information for the product, including information associating the product with one or more of the generic product descriptions and information defining constraints for the product in terms of said properties of the associated generic product descriptions,
operating the digital processing means in accordance with the rules to derive for the specific product information, from the data of (a) and (b), a valid combination of the specific product information and a generic process description as the procedure for generating the product.
In the case where the valid combination is based on a generic process description including a description of said at least one iterative set of activities, the operation of the digital processing means also derives, on the basis of the product constraints and the process capabilities for the activities of said iterative set, a prediction of the number of iterations required, or a prediction of the outcome for a given number of iterations.
The data defining the process capabilities can, for example, take the form of look-up tables and/or statistical functions, defining relationships between product properties and a predicted number of iterations. In a further aspect the present invention provides a data processing method for obtaining a procedure for generating a product, the method using a computer based data processing system comprising:
digital processing means, and
digital storage means,
the digital storage means having a database stored therein comprising:
(a) data defining generic product descriptions in terms of physical and/or functional elements and associated properties,
(b) data defining a plurality of generic process descriptions in terms of process activities, activity sequence, and associated process capabilities, and
(c) data defining rules relating to (a) and (b), the method comprising:
providing the system with specific product information for the product, including information associating the product with one or more of the generic product descriptions and information defining constraints for the product in terms of said generic product properties, the data to be processed further including information defining ranges of probability of one or more parameters of said product,
operating the digital processing means in accordance with the rules to select a specific value for the or each said defined product parameter range and to derive for the specific product information, on the basis of said selected parameter(s), from the data of (a) and (b), a valid combination of the specific product information and a generic process description as the procedure for generating the product.
With this method it is possible to develop a complete description of a procedure for the product even when there is initial uncertainty in the definition of the product, as may be the case with a design procedure for example.
Optionally, the processing means carries out the above operation a plurality of times, each time selecting a value of the or each said product parameter, to develop a plurality of alternative possible procedures. Advantageously, the rules may control the processing means to carry out these plurality of operations in the manner of a xe2x80x98Monte Carloxe2x80x99 simulation, to derive the most likely best case and worst case procedures in relation to the product constraints.
The present invention also provides computer based data processing systems operable in accordance with one or more of the aspects defined above.
Thus in yet another aspect, the invention provides a computer based data processing system for use in providing a procedure for generating a product, the system comprising:
(1) a storage unit having stored therein data defining:
(a) one or more generic product descriptions of product physical and for functional elements and associated properties;
(b) generic descriptions of processing elements and capabilities in relation to the procedure; and
(c) a series of rules relating to (a) and (b)
(2) a digital processing unit comprising a first processing means for operating the stored rules to derive for specific product information given in terms of said generic product description, from the stored data:
(i) a selection of valid combinations of (a) and (b) as industrial activities, and
(ii) an arrangement of the activities of (i) in order; and a second processing means to store said derived selection and arrangement in the storage unit as an output file.